


One Night and One More Time

by starduster



Category: Gintama
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Rough Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-26
Updated: 2017-02-26
Packaged: 2018-09-26 23:55:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,760
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9934670
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starduster/pseuds/starduster
Summary: They've always found comfort in each other, but sometimes one needs it more.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Set right after the Rakuyo arc.

 It wasn’t unheard of, at least during the war, for two soldiers to spend a night or two together.  It was a natural progression, really; there wasn’t always a brothel nearby, and even those wouldn’t always open their doors to a bunch of rag-tag soldiers who were quickly becoming less national heroes and more national disappointments.  Sometimes the aches and pains and loneliness of war were better soothed not by the soft painted lips of women kept in cages but by the rough dirty hands of the men you fought beside.

That was how it started, at least.  They would fall together in one of their tents and spend an hour in blissful ignorance of the war outside, wrapped up in skin and sweat and all of Zura’s goddamned hair.  Takasugi knew damned well that Zura liked order and control, wanted everything to be just as he wanted it to be and easily changeable at his own whim, and wasn’t even really into men in the first place, so he hadn’t expected Zura to acquiesce so quickly to his insistent pleas for him to bend over and let Takasugi take control.  Maybe that’s what it was for them, a chance for Takasugi to finally be in control of something and for Zura to relinquish some of that burden onto someone else. 

But that was nearly ten years ago.  After the rebels scattered into the wind he had wandered the new Japan alone, taking heads for money and listening to the rumors brought to him on the wind.  Joui forces popping up like pimples on the face of the empire, easily popped save for a few stubborn souls who just couldn’t let the past go. 

One of those souls had been Zura, and one had been him.

\---

It will take them two days to return to Earth.  Their rag-tag fleet of ships heads slowly for the nearest warp gate as its inhabitants tend their wounds and try to return to some semblance of normalcy. 

Takasugi has returned to his quarters on the Kiheitai’s flagship.  The clock on the wall, set to Edo’s time, reads nearly midnight but harsh golden light from a nearby star is piercing through the portholes and he knows he won’t sleep.  His body is tired but his mind is firing on all cylinders.

The four of them together again.  Gintoki, Zura, Tatsuma, and him.  Vastly different circumstances, vastly different men.  The last time the four of them were together Takasugi still had both eyes and not so many night terrors. 

This is an uneasy peace, he knows.  They’re not friends, not anymore, not for a long time.  They share a common enemy is all, and the enemy of my enemy is my friend.  He’s seen the way Gintoki’s kids draw closer when Takasugi passes, how Gintoki himself has barely said a word to him since they boarded the ships, how even Tatsuma has toned himself down in Takasugi’s presence.  He is an outsider who can’t be trusted right now.  And why should he be? He certainly hasn’t given them reason to trust him in the past. 

The only one who has given him the time of day since their hasty reunion is Zura.  Pretty, stupid Zura whose brain is anything but pretty and stupid, the cleverest among them all.

Zura doesn’t sleep much.  On the rare occasions that they collaborated after the war Takasugi had seen that Zura was more prone to irregular naps than solid blocks of sleep.  He has a nagging suspicion that Zura too has nightmares, the kind that leave Takasugi gasping for breath and scrambling to feel for an eye that isn’t there.

So it doesn’t come as a surprise that even at midnight Zura opens his door to Takasugi’s knocking and looks unrumpled by sleep.  His eyebrows raise in a silent question but he steps aside nonetheless to let Takasugi pass into the room.

“Is something wrong?” he asks quietly as the two of them settle at the low table in the middle of the room. 

This is the first time he’s really gotten any downtime with just Zura.  Post-battle everyone had gone their separate ways for the journey back to earth, and Takasugi had spent the day with his Kiheitai, bouncing plans off Bansai and Takechi while Matako clung persistently to his side.  He had visited briefly with the heavily-sedated Kamui and a very tired looking Abuto, had even shared a surprisingly pleasant dinner with Tatsuma and his Yato woman.  He hadn’t even seen Gintoki, and had only seen glimpses of Zura here and there. 

So now, sitting here at a small table at night as Zura prepares tea on a hot plate, everything feels wrong.  They did this when they were kids, staying up late and playing cards or swapping ghost stories until Shouyo discovered them and sent them back to bed with a gentle whack on the head.  In the brief collaborations between their two factions of rebels there hadn’t been enough time or security for them to really sit down and talk.

It doesn’t feel real.

“Takasugi.”

Something warm is being pressed into his hands.  A cup of tea.  Reality swims back to him and he sees Zura sitting beside him, staring at him with equal parts concern and fear in his eyes.  Takasugi gazes into the green depths of his teacup and wants to sip it, to curl his fingers around it just for the warmth, but it doesn’t seem like his fingers want to work.  A hazy memory surfaces in his brain of something Takechi said once: _dissociation.  Things don’t feel like they’re real, like you’re disconnected from yourself.  A natural response to stress, but sometimes it’s too much._

“This is fucked up, Zura,” he finally says, and now his fingers curl around the cup and lift it to his lips.  Zura always did make good tea.

“Not Zura, Katsura,” Zura replies primly, automatically.  “What’s fucked up?”

Takasugi gestures broadly with one hand at the room, at the ships, at the space stretching out infinitely beyond them.  “All this, everything.  Shouyo, the Altana, that crow motherfucker.  I can’t tell if I want to kill Gintoki or kill myself.”  Something needs to die.  Death has always been a good marker of the passage of time in Takasugi’s life, but now even the permanence of death doesn’t mean anything.  _Ash brown hair, lifeless red eyes, blood seeping into the dirt from his neck—_

Zura’s hand alights on his own and squeezes gently.  “We’ll figure it out.”  Such a soft, reassuring voice, like what he imagines a good mother might sound like.  He heard this voice a lot during the war, Zura soothing him out of a panic attack, Zura comforting a grieving widow, Zura naked beside him in their tent after a rough battle, talking about nothing.

He sets down his teacup, slides one arm around Zura’s slender waist, and kisses him.  It’s not much more than a soft brush on lips on lips, but Zura tenses against him.  So he kisses Zura’s cheek, his jaw, down his neck.  Some of the tension had bled out of him and he even shivers a little when Takasugi’s other arm wraps around him as well and hands stroke his sides.

“Let me have you again, Zura,” he mumbles into Zura’s neck.  His hands slide down Zura’s back and come to rest on the tie of his obi, asking, waiting, not moving.  “Please.  Just once more.”

Zura sighs softly.  “You’re not well.  You need help, Takasugi.”

“Then help me, damn it!” he whispers hysterically, fingers moving of their own volition to start untying the tidy knot of the obi.  Zura isn’t fighting back, and Takasugi pulls back from Zura’s neck and searches his face for answers.  All he finds in those tired brown eyes are pity and sadness, not a hint of fear.  “Please,” he murmurs, lifting a hand to cup Zura’s cheek.  “It makes me feel alive.”

There’s a long moment when Zura just stares into his eyes, then he sighs again and shrugs the loose side of his kimono off his shoulder.  “Once more,” he repeats, pushing Takasugi delicately away so he can lift up on his knees and begin to shed his clothes properly.  “One more time for old times’ sake.”

 _For old times’ sake_ , Takasugi thinks as he seizes Zura’s bony shoulders and yanks him in for a bruising kiss.  _The old times weren’t good at all, so why do we keep coming back to them?_ But as he pushes Zura roughly down to the floor he knows why he came back: it feels safe.  It feels familiar.  He’s in control of something for once in his life, and Zura is smiling up at him through his messy curtain of hair, and for once, the howl of the beast inside him has subsided to a content purr. 

“Be gentle,” Zura scolds softly, though he’s smiling and lifting his hips to accommodate Takasugi yanking his boxers off and tossing them aside.  “I haven’t done this since back then, you know…”

\---

He’s careful with the first push in.  Zura wasn’t lying when he said he hasn’t done this in a while; he’s tight as a vice, almost painfully so, and with his one good eye fixed on Zura’s face, on the way his eyes are screwed shut and he’s huffing out breaths through his nose, Takasugi can see that it’s not exactly comfortable for Zura, either.  Nonetheless Zura wriggles his hips to take him all the way in, letting out a low whine when Takasugi’s hips finally meet his own. 

One of Zura’s hands is braced against Takasugi’s chest, pushing firmly back against him to keep his first movements slow and easy, and his other is fisted in their discarded kimonos beneath him, white knuckled.  Takasugi slides one hand over Zura’s clenched one and rubs soothingly until he relents and relaxes his hand enough for Takasugi to slide in and lace their fingers together.  It’s sappy and womanly, Takasugi thinks as he raises their joined hands to kiss Zura’s knuckles, but what does it matter? Society has no rules for broken fools.

The gentleness doesn’t last; as Takasugi feels Zura minutely relaxing around him he starts to move harder and faster, the sound of flash slapping flash mingling with Takasugi’s puffing breath and Zura’s stifled gasps and groans.  Zura’s legs tighten around Takasugi’s waist and Takasugi chances a glance down to see Zura’s cock, flushed red and already dripping precome, bobbing against his stomach with every move.  It sends a shock of renewed arousal up Takasugi’s spine to think that _he’s_ the one who can do this to Zura, has the power to melt this stoic idiot into a shivering puddle.  With a growl he seizes both of Zura’s dainty wrists and pins them tight to the floor, driving into Zura with such force that his cries are starting to become too much to muffle, spilling freely into the air like a radio broadcast telling everyone on the ship that Zura’s getting the ass-fucking of his life from the man nearly everyone on the ship hates. 

“Shit, fuck, oh my _god—“_ One of Zura’s hands is struggling against Takasugi’s grip, no doubt desperate to cover his mouth in an attempt to stifle the lewd string of swears issuing forth.  Zura hates being loud during sex, and Takasugi loves to push Zura past his comfort zone. 

“Let them hear,” Takasugi whispers, tucking his face against Zura’s neck and biting down hard enough to pull another shout from him.  “Let them hear how good I’m fucking you.”

There’s tears in Zura’s eyes now, Takasugi notices when he straightens up, and he almost slows down to make sure he’s not killing the poor man before Zura’s glorious mouth starts babbling again.

“ _Yes, please, oh fuck oh fuck please,”_ he slurs, trying to counterthrust his hips back to meet Takasugi’s bruising pace.  Zura’s legs pull him in as close as the two of them can possibly be, and when he finally comes it’s so blisteringly strong that it pulls Takasugi over the edge as well.

Together they lay in an ungainly heap of skin and sweat and come, Zura nearly folded in half beneath Takasugi and his head caged in by Takasugi’s arms.  Their foreheads pressed together and his hands pillowed beneath Zura’s head gives Takasugi the perfect angle to drop lazy kisses on Zura’s lips.  Orgasms make him affectionate, he’ll admit that, and Zura has always accepted it willingly despite the absolute lack of anything even approaching love between them.  He lets Takasugi hold his hand and kiss all over him because it calms the other man down, having something to cherish that isn’t going to slip away between his fingers (for the time being).

Takasugi wipes a tear off Zura’s face with a trembling finger and smears it onto their discarded clothing.  “Was it too much?” he whispers against Zura’s lips, and his voice sounds ungainly and far too loud in the silence.

“Maybe a little,” Zura croaks.  He sounds absolutely wrecked, but he cranes his neck and chastely kisses Takasugi’s cheek.  “But it was a good too much.”

Takasugi sighs and drops his head against Zura’s neck, presses a soft kiss to the bruising bite mark he left before in way of an apology.  Finally he sits up and pulls out slowly, mindful of hurting Zura more than he already has.  Zura’s hole is pink and wet with lube, and with one thumb Takasugi stretches the loose muscle and watches  pearly white cum ooze out and down his crack. 

“Quit staring,” Zura groans with a grimace, and he shoves weakly at Takasugi with one foot. 

“’s a pretty sight,” he teases back, petting Zura’s thigh soothingly before hauling himself to his feet.

Zura rests on the floor atop their discarded kimonos and watches with sleepy, half-lidded eyes as Takasugi spreads out the futon and slips in.   As the sweat dries on his skin and the scent of their sex dissipates from the air, so too goes the sense of warm intimacy that sometimes borders too close on stronger emotions for Takasugi’s  comfort.  They aren’t lovers, after all.  They’re simply comrades who have found that their bodies fit together particularly well on hard, lonely nights.

He watches, with a sort of tired amusement, as Zura pushes himself wobbly to his feet, complete with winces and groans.  His whole body is flushed pink and sweaty and there’s a lovely assortment of bruises, bites, and hickeys parading down his neck and chest.  He can’t help but let out a little giggle.  “You look like fucked-out shit, Zura.”

Zura scowls at him, looks gloriously offended, and snatches Takasugi’s kimono off the floor to wipe away the come on his thighs.  “It’s not Zura, it’s Katsura.  And whose fault is it that I look fucked-out, huh? If the Harusame attack tomorrow morning I’m not even going to be able to get out of bed, thanks to you.”

“You poor thing,” Takasugi drones, but he still lifts up the covers beside him and allows Zura to settle in beside him.  He’d never admit it, never _has_ admitted it, but he likes sleeping next to Zura.  Maybe he would like sleeping next to anyone, the warm weight of another living body pressed up against his side, even though he’s only ever slept next to this one man.  But that’s too heavy to think about right now; his mind is pleasantly blank and Zura is yawning and saying something. 

Zura’s staring at him with a particularly piercing look, too intense for a nice after-sex nap.  “What?” Takasugi asks flatly.  He’d really just like to gather Zura up in his arms, something small and living he can protect, and sleep their way back to Earth, but Zura seems intent on whatever he’s just said.

“I said, how are you feeling? You kind of scared me earlier,” Zura says softly. 

Takasugi swallows thickly and looks away from Zura’s piercing stare.  “I’m fine,” he finally decides, then keeps going when Zura furrows his eyebrows in annoyance.  “Not fine, I guess, but I’m not going to kill myself, if that’s what you’re getting at.”  Enough has grown between them over the years that talking to Zura like this doesn’t hurt.  He always was like the team mom; if you had a problem or you needed reassurance or just a firm smack on the ass to get you motivated, you went to Zura.

Zura’s frown has taken on a pitying sort of quality and irritation knots in Takasugi’s belly.  He doesn’t want to be pitied, he wants to sleep.  But Zura never has taken the hint well on anything.  “Things are going to be different now,” Zura says quietly, reaching out and sweeping the hair away from Takasugi’s empty socket.  “You’re all going to have to get along for the time being.”

Takasugi snorts derisively.  “Tell that to Gintoki.”

“I think Gintoki is confused,” he replies.  “All of this has happened so fast, and there’s not been any downtime for him to just think it all through.  There’s too many questions without answers right now, and he’s just trying to figure things out the best he can.  Give him time, he’ll come around.  He always has.” 

Exhaustion is starting to creep up on him.  Bickering doesn’t hold much appeal in comparison to sleep, so instead he throws an arm over Zura’s side and pulls him closer.  Zura hums in contentment, and everything feels all right.

“Thank you,” Takasugi murmurs into Zura’s hair after a few minutes have passed. 

Zura smiles against him.  “You’re very welcome.”

\---

He wakes to the feeling of an empty bed and the muffled sound of arguing outside the room.  The ever present light of a nearby sun beams through the high porthole and warms the spot beside him where Zura once slept.  Their dirty clothes are still in a pile in the middle of the room, but Zura’s grey haori is gone and a trunk in the corner, with a few plain kimonos and obis stashed inside, is open and rifled through.  Zura is already up, dressed, and carrying on with his life. 

How nice that would be. 

His joints pop noisily as he rises from bed, kicking the futon aside and stalking over to the chest.  He digs out a random kimono and dons it, scowling at its extra length.  It nearly pools around his feet, but that’s Zura’s problem, not his.  The hushed arguing outside the door has continued, and now Takasugi can pick out Zura’s and Gintoki’s voices.  Gintoki is not who he wants to deal with right now; a glance at the clock reveals that it’s about 7, and dealing with an angry Gintoki is not something easily done in the early morning.

He hits the switch to open the door with a loose fist and it slides open with a quiet hiss of hydraulic pressure, but Zura startles nonetheless.  The tension in the hallway could be cut with a knife.  Gintoki’s arms are crossed and his jaw is clenched so hard he’s surprised he hasn’t broken a tooth, and Zura’s hands are tucked neatly up the sleeves of his haori but Takasugi can see the way his hands clutch his elbows beneath the fabric.

“Speak of the devil himself,” Gintoki mutters, switching his furious stare from Zura to Takasugi.  “The fuck do you think you’re doing?”

Out of the corner of his eye Takasugi can see that despite being yanked up a little further than usual most of the bruises and bites on Zura’s neck are visible, especially the big one.  He can start to piece together what happened: Gintoki came calling on Zura and when Zura emerged from his room looking like he’d been positively mauled Gintoki had drawn his own conclusions about who those marks had come from and the circumstances under which they’d come.  Zura sighs and sucks on his bottom lip, an old tell of anxiety.

“I was trying to get some fucking sleep,” Takasugi snipes back, stepping up beside Zura and surreptitiously sliding on hand onto the small of his back, like trying to soothe a frightened dog.  “Hard to sleep when your loud mouth is running.”

“You can sleep after forcing yourself on somebody that used to trust you?” Gintoki hisses.  “And get your fucking hand off him.”

Zura slides between the two of them.  “Gintoki, it wasn’t _like that_ , come on—“

“ _Forced_ myself?” Takasugi huffs out with a laugh.  “God, Gintoki, has it been so long since you’ve been laid that you’ve forgotten that sometimes people like it a little rough?”

“Both of you, quit!” Zura snaps.  His face is so red with frustration and embarrassment that Takasugi feels like there should be steam billowing from his ears like in some old cartoon.  He stand still and quiet long enough for some of the tension to bleed out of the situation, then lifts his chin and gestures over Gintoki’s shoulder.  “Gintoki.”

Takasugi follows where Zura is pointing and sees Gintoki’s kids standing at the far end of the hallway, right at the corner.  The glasses boy looks concerned – doesn’t he always? – and the Yato girl is clutching her broken umbrella double fisted like a weapon with a look of keen suspicion on her face. 

Gintoki’s face softens a little at the sight of the kids, and he sucks in a breath and exhales it long and shaky.  He closes his eyes for a moment then turns back to Takasugi.  “You need to fucking watch yourself.  I swear, you hurt him again…”  And with that he stalks off down the hallway towards the kids.

He expects Zura to be angry.  _You never think before you start fucking arguing,_ he used to holler as he pried Gintoki and Takasugi apart outside the school or in the middle of an encampment.  Instead Zura just sighs, a familiar sound now, and takes Takasugi’s hand in his.  “I’m sorry about him.”

“Not your fault,” Takasugi responds simply.  He lifts their joined hands to his lips and kisses Zura’s scarred knuckles gently.  “Thanks for last night.  I… I needed that.”

Zura smiles tiredly.  “You’re welcome.  Maybe Gintoki is just mad at you because he hasn’t gotten laid in a decade and had to listen to us.”  Takasugi snorts and Zura’s smile widens.  “You’re welcome in my bed anytime, Takasugi.  We’re still friends, after all.”

A final squeeze to Zura’s hand and Takasugi heads off down the hall.  “I’ll hold you to that, Zura.”

 

 


End file.
